And Sometimes, What Seems Like the Ending
by The-Darkness-Befalls
Summary: Hermione Granger is called as a Slayer. Unfortunately, she has no idea what a Slayer is-let alone someone to guide her. In the middle of a war, she must forge her own path, hide her gift, and ultimately discover her destiny. Does it lie with the world she was born into, the world she was gifted, or the one thrust upon her shoulders?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** The worlds and characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Harry Potter do not belong to me. I'm just playing in their sandboxes.

**Full summary**: Hermione Granger is called as a Slayer. Unfortunately, she has no idea what a Slayer is-let alone someone to guide her. In the middle of a war, she must forge her own path, hide her gift, and ultimately discover her destiny. Does it lie with the world she was born into, the world she was gifted, or the one thrust upon her shoulders?

HP canon compliant up until the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. BtVS canon compliant up through the Glory arc, at which point the story picks up.

* * *

Some stories are not meant to start at the beginning. Some stories are meant to start at the end, right before the big finale. Some stories are meant to start smack dab in the middle, where you're just beginning to think you know what's going on.

Some stories are not meant to start at the beginning. And sometimes, what seems like the ending is only just the beginning.

* * *

In late September of 2000, everything in her life began to change.

The change was not gradual or kind, but sudden and completely terrifying. One day, she was happily filing permits in the main office of the _Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures_ and the next she was panicking over her sister and the fact that _no one else remembered her._

Hermione knew that something was wrong as soon as it had happened. It was as if a switch suddenly flipped in her head, warning her of something bad.

Within a few days, she was on forced leave from work, Molly had asked her if she needed to visit with a Healer several times, and Ron was looking more worried than she'd seen him in a long time.

She knew she wasn't crazy. She could _feel it._ Just like she'd felt the chill in her spine right before every big and terrible event since she was thirteen years old. Just like she felt every time she was around the more dangerous of Hagrid's pets and the way she felt around Dolores Umbridge and _Voldemort. _

There was no record of her sister in England at all. Her teachers had never heard of her, the hospital had no record of birth, and even though she had clear memories of it, her parents in Australia had no memory of her sister either.

Where was _Dawn?_ Was she out there, somewhere, alone? Feeling abandoned, and forgotten?

* * *

By December, Hermione had moved out of her little flat and into her parent's house. They were still in Australia, cheerfully unaware of her existence, of course, but there was enough in the bank account her parents had opened for her as a child that she could continue to keep the electricity and water on until the summer without having any income.

She'd taken a leave of absence from the Ministry and the strain that had been wrought with her adamant refusal to put "the idea that you had a sister" behind her had broken both her romantic relationship with Ron and her friendship with Harry, apart. She continued to search for Dawn, trying to find any sliver of memory in anyone she could remember Dawn ever having spoken to.

By February, she'd turned to whatever local Wicca communities she could find in search of an answer.

In early March, she'd found a Wicca girl who was willing to teach her a blood to blood spell.

As a witch who wielded a wand, Wicca was considered a lesser magic. After all, they pulled magic from the Earth, and were blessed or cursed by ancient gods and goddesses at request. Witches like here were born magic, pulled their spells from within. The idea of using Wicca was an affront to the community that had given her a home and an amazing life.

But she would do a lot more for her little sister.

* * *

Her head was spinning. Everything ached. But there was an image in her head. There was a wooden sign, recently repainted in cheery colors. _Welcome to Sunnydale, California._

Her destination in mind, she thanked the Wicca, paid her more than she needed to, and bought plane tickets for the trip. She would make it alone.

She arrived in Los Angeles two days later, completely exhausted from her trip. She had packed everything she might have a cause to need into her beaded bag and got on a bus. A few hours later, she walked out of the bus stop and realised she had absolutely no idea where to look for her now.

She felt lost and realised how alone she had truly become.


	2. Chapter 2

Sunnydale, California could more accurately be referred to as Sunnyhell, and Hermione sincerely doubted she was the first to think so. The supernatural population was leaps and bounds past England, and there seemed to be no regard for the laws that governed them. She knew things were different in the US. The laws weren't the same as back home, but to see so many creatures out at night (and sometimes even during the day!) was utterly baffling.

She'd come across her first vampire two nights into her search for Dawn. It was newly turned and smelled far worse than the vampires she knew from home.

The predator in her had taken over when the vampire had attacked. Instead of the spells she'd learned to protect herself from an errant vampire attack, she'd punched him in the face and ended up skewering him with her wand.

After the first one, she found some sort of eerie thrill take her over, a _rightness_. It was terrifying and exciting and she hated it as much as she loved it.

It hadn't been the first time she'd felt that pull. She'd felt it since she was thirteen years old and knew there was a creature in the school petrifying students, since she froze a riot of Cornish Pixies, and in the instant she saw the reflection of the Basilisk. But she hadn't felt it to this extent until she was a Third Year, faced with Red Caps, Grindylows, and Boggarts. When there was something inside her that just screamed out that these creatures were _wrong_. That they needed to be hunted down and destroyed.

At that age, it was an intensely scary feeling that lead her to spend countless hours in the library researching human to animal polyjuice accidents to find out if there was ever a way to erase the feeling inside she assumed had to be left over from being a cat.

As a young teenager, she never stopped to think about the fact that she'd never thought that way about mice or birds, even though that was a normal and instinctual feline response. As an adult, the idea that _maybe it wasn't from being a cat_ was utterly terrifying feeling.

And so, she preferred not to think about it at all, and instead spent her days searching in vain for her sister and her nights attacking vampires in one of Sunnydale's startling number of cemeteries.

The search went achingly slow.


End file.
